I dated a woman who's uncle was retired from the CIA. Around 2001 or so, in a candid, personal conversation, well after he'd retired, he told us that every piece of data, without exception, sent over "computer networks", was backed up by the government/CIA (I lump them together despite history showing their disparity).
I believe he retired in the early 90's, and I recall being surprised that the government was on to, or rather suspicious of, the technology that early (so many things they're incompetent in, and so many they're not).
Regardless, I've never wanted to live in, or support, (passively or knowingly), a country that would partake in such things. That definitely wasn't the beginning of my mistrust and suspicion, but the memory comes back to me today hearing the recent court-orders.

To me, I have always just thought "how bored would you have to be to care and record the 90% of the calls and texts of banality of teenage girls?"

We need an open source decentralized and encrypted P2P network for IM and audio/video communications that we can safely run on encrypted devices.

Do we have one of those?

Yeah folks, anything in the news or on the plate is over 30 years old in the dog years of tech, we're cuckled.

But he couldn't have warned us about Indy 4?

Either he lied to you or their retention is not very high. Possessing the amount of storage it would take just to log packet headers for all internet communications is would be an 8th Wonder of the World kinda feat. Keeping the actual data would be practically impossible.

But haven't you heard of fractal encrypted storage (FES) on quartz crystals ?? Oh no... I have said too much.

The CTO of the CIA gave a talk this year where he said, in no uncertain terms, they they collect everything and keep it "forever." He put the scare-quotes around forever but not everything.

So they keep every ping ever sent to every server in existence? They keep copies of every video ever uploaded to youtube multiplied by THE NUMBER OF TIMES ITS BEEN VIEWED? They keep copies of every single video game ever created multiplied by THE NUMBER OF TIMES IT'S BEEN DOWNLOADED (on Steam, Pirate Bay, etc.)

Every single IP capera in existence, streaming video (often times 1080p video) to remote locations around the world is having it's stream recorded non stop, 24/7. I'd say those cameras alone produce at least 10 terabytes of data EVERY SECOND.

Whatever.